Editorial roundup

The Grand Canyon is a breathtaking, mile-deep, 277-mile-long chasm in the Arizona landscape, 18 miles at its widest part. It took six million years to create, exposing more than two billion years of rock strata…

Heretofore, hiking, rafting the river or a helicopter ride have been the only ways in – and out. That has kept the numbers down and the canyon’s spectacular vistas largely pristine.

But recently, a Scottsdale, Ariz., developer has been working with some leaders of the Navajo Nation to change that. The Navajos own the land to the east of the national park boundary, at the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers, and the proposal is to build a $1 billion tourist mecca that would dramatically alter the nature of the canyon and its rivers…

It takes little imagination to envision the irreparable damage that such an influx of people and resulting water demands, trash and pollution would do to a place that has been federally protected since President Theodore Roosevelt declared it a national monument in 1908.

One can be simultaneously sympathetic to the desire of the Navajos to generate revenue and jobs, and appalled at the idea of marring an irreplaceable global treasure…

• Northeast Ohio Media Group

… Getting most voters to buy into the argument that judges are underpaid is about as difficult as convincing them their taxes are too low. A great many believe judges earn salaries that are scandalously high.

But the voters who think that are wrong. In fact, it’s not hard to make the case that low judicial pay might very well be affecting the quality of justice in Ohio.

… Elected judges in Ohio have gone more than seven years without a raise. Gov. John Kasich’s budget included a raise of 5 percent annually for four years, but the House — burned last year when it passed a pay raise bill and the Senate refused to concur — removed the provision.

… The $121,350 salary of a Common Pleas judge is below that of his counterparts in every state that borders Ohio. It’s $52,000 less than what trial court judges earn in Pennsylvania and nearly $66,000 less than judges in Illinois.

Ohio’s appellate court judges ($132,000) rank 32nd nationally in pay, and Ohio’s Supreme Court judges ($141,600) rank 39th. An Ohio Supreme Court judge earns about a third — in some cases far less — of the salary paid partners in large law firms…